From karting novice to race car driver

Kimbolton in March

A frustrating result at Kimbolton this weekend as we couldn’t match our previous pace at this our favourite circuit. With hopes of a top 5 finish it soon became apparent that it was not to be our day.

Sam leads the pack through turn 1 in the restarted heat 1

Race day started well enough with Sam getting through the first corner in Heat 1 in the lead from a starting position of P3. Better still, he pulled out a 3-4 length advantage through the “bus stop” on the first lap, but something was not right through the last sector of the lap and onto the start/finish straight in particular. We were very slow out of the tight corners and the penalty was severe. The pack caught him quickly and by lap 3 he was overtaken.

Sam said “I just had no power or acceleration onto the straight, I was a sitting duck“.

Despite valiant effort through sectors 1 and 2, the overall time penalty for our sector 3 problems made it impossible to stay in second place and by the 4th lap Sam had been caught again but this time instead of overtaking he needlessly put Sam on the grass (same person, second month in a row). Where are the Marshalls looking when you need them! Sam lost 7 places by the time he had recovered and finished steaming in 9th.

A fuming Sam said “&^%$*##@***** [censored ]“.

.

For heat 2 Sam started in P17 and did manage to better that starting position, getting up to 11th by the half way point but could not sustain the progress and it wasn’t enough to compensate for the poor result in heat 1.

Despondent - Sam comes home in 12th

For the final we made a few kart adjustments for the P11 grid position. As before, from the rolling start Sam got a great start and through turn 1 got up to 4th place, but it was not to last and one by one the karts behind queued up to out drag Sam down the start/finish straight. After slipping back to 8th, Sam took advantage of a tangle in front to get up to 6th but then lost the places again, outdragged on the straight. A few were held back by Sam taking a defensive line on the straight but in the end even that hurt us. On the last lap a tap from behind at the end of the straight took Sam off from 8th place and he came home a disappointed 12th.